Free Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy Page B

going across on Hello Chuckie in the sixth at Pimlico, and Hello Chuckie is two-to-one on the morning line. There is more. Martin also parlayed the three horses for yet
another ten.
    Now, Billy knows that Martin is a hell of a sport, always pays, and loses more than he wins, which has always been pleasant for Billy, who takes a good bit of his play. But my Jesus Christ
almighty, if he wins the third, plus the three-horse parlay, Billy is in trouble. Billy doesn’t hold every bet he takes. You hold some, lay off some. You hold what you think you can cover,
maybe a little more, if you’re brassy like Billy. Billy lays some off with his pal Frankie Buchanan, who has the big book in Albany. But mother pin a rose on Billy. For bravery. For Billy is
holding all of Martin’s play. Didn’t lay off a dime. Why? Because suckers and losers bet three-horse parlays. I’ll hold them all day long, was Billy’s philosophy
until a few minutes ago when Clem McCarthy came on with the Friar Charles news. And now Billy is sitting at his card table in the front room. (Billy came here to Thanksgiving dinner six years ago
and never went back downtown to his furnished room.) His money sits on the floor, next to his bridge chair, in a Dyke cigar box, Dykes being the cigar the McCall machine pushed in all the grocery
and candy stores in town.
    Billy himself sits under the big, shitty print of Mo the Kid in the gold frame. Billy’s fingers are working with his number two Mongol pencil on the long yellow pad, and his eyes keep
peeking out through the curtains on the front windows in case state cops step on his stoop, in which case Billy would be into the toilet p.g.d.q., those horse bets would be on their way down the
city conduits toward the river, and even the most enterprising raider could not then bring them back and pin them on Billy’s chest.
    Stan whatsisname, the WHN disk jockey, was talking about Bob Crosby and Billy felt good hearing that because he knew Crosby, had heard him in Saratoga, danced to his music with Angie, talked
music with him when he played The Edgewood over in Rensselaer. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” Crosby was playing now. The phone rang and Billy turned Crosby down. Frankie
Buchanan with the results of the fifth at Arlington Park, Friar Charles official now. Billy then told Frankie about Martin Daugherty’s very weird parlay.
    “You’re the weird one,” said Frankie, who was as weird as they come. One of the best-liked guys in Albany, Frankie, and yet he couldn’t take the public. He’d come
out at night for ham and eggs, and you’d have to sit with him in his car behind the Morris diner while he ate off a paper plate. Crazy bastards in this world.
    “You want to give me the third horse or part of that parlay?”
    “No,” said Billy, “I can’t believe the son of a bitch can pick three in a row, and parlay them, too. I never seen it done. I believe in luck but not miracles.”
    “Okay, pal,” said Frankie, “it’s all yours.” And he left Billy wondering if he was really crazy Billy could cut the mustard if the third horse ran out of the money,
because the day’s play was good. But if Martin Daugherty wins the parlay, Billy, it’s up in the seven, eight hundreds, even if nobody else wins a nickel. And Billy Boy, you don’t
have that kind of cash. So why, oh why, is darlin’ Billy doing it? Well, it’s a gamble, after all. And Billy is certainly a gambler. Nobody will argue that. And Billy is already feeling
the pressure rise in his throat, his gut, under his armpits, under his teeth and behind his jockey shorts. Christ, it tickles me somewhere, Billy thinks, and the money doesn’t matter.
Pressure. Sweet pressure. Here we go again, folks.
    Crosby was just winding up “Deep Blue Sea.” Billy remembered listening to it with Angie, saw her face. And then it was Morey Amsterdam on the radio. Popped into the studio as usual
to ad lib with Stan. I gotta go up to the